Born in 1914 in Mauritius of Anglo-Irish and French descent, he was educated at Brighton College and St John's College, Cambridge, where he read biology.

He was one of the early post-war abstract expressionist painters. In 1953 he became part of the 'Free Painters Group'. In the mid-fifties, having taken good note of the American contribution, he rebelled against 'the abuses of action painting'. By the sixties Avray Wilson had exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, France, the United States and Japan. However he remains and hopes to remain an outsider.

As Gordon Rattray Taylor wrote in 1977: 'Frank Avray Wilson is that very rare animal - a practising artist who is also a competent biologist. This no doubt accounts for his intermittent dialogue with the late Professor Waddington, who was a practising biologist with more than a layman's knowledge of the visual arts. When such rare individuals, who bestride the two worlds, try to tell us something about how they interlock, we shall be well advised to listen carefully.'